Blur
by moodyreindeer
Summary: Acceptance into the world of villains has finally come for Max, but he didn't expect the price to be in the form of his twin's life. One-Shot/The Thundermans.


**I did it. I sat down and wrote another piece of Thunderman shit.**

**And I regret nothing. **

**Can I just say that Max reminds me of Dr. Doofenshmirtz, just because of how they are both evil for attention and work in weird labs in their houses that everyone just comes in to and mocks.**

**Am I the only one that sees that?**

**I am?**

**Okay.**

* * *

His mother screaming wakes him up.

Max stumbled upstairs, looking at his father's angry face and his mother sobbing frame to have panic creep into his gut. Something wasn't right, because nothing else could scream 'wrong' like his mother screaming bloody murder in their dark living room at a little past midnight.

"What's happening?" Max asked, looking around for any thing that stuck out at him, but everything in there house looked the same, except for his parents obvious state of distress.

"Why'd you take her?" His mother cried, her ashen, tear-streaked face looking up at him.

Max stared back, completely lost.

"Now, Barb, we can't jump to conclusions," his father tried to assure her, but of course they can, because they are superheroes, and superheroes always are within reason to blame villains for choas.

But they could've picked a better time to help him pursue his villainous path.

"What? Who's gone?" Max asked again, eyes bouncing back and forth between his parents. He was, after all, completely within in his rights to ask such question, for his heart was about to explode and the ringing in his ears had yet to fade from the very moment he awoke.

"It was him!" His mother simply wailed. "All these years, I should've seen it coming."

Max's heart was beginning to pound so loudly it seemed to fill the entire room. His own parents think he did something, whatever this was.

"Max," his father began, looking grim in the face, "Phoebe was taken."

Seconds after the words sunk into his head, Max was flying up the stairs, throwing open the door to his sister's room.

Nothing looked too altered. Her shaggy purple carpet still remained void of any mess. Her desk and dressers were lined with books and other items, neatly arranged to her suiting like they always had been.

Anyone else could had said the only strange thing with the tossled sheets and thrown pillows (one just so happening to have landed on the vanity across the room), but Max knew better. He watched Phoebe's curtains, colored like the sea, flap in the night breeze with a growing pit of dread.

Phoebe hated having her window open.

His stomach lurched as he stepped forward, examining the pulled up window and dancing curtains.

No broken glass, not a speck of blood or a strand of hair.

Nothing about it told anyone it was a crime scene.

Max was about to turn - to do what? he wonders, go downstairs and plead to his parents that he wasn't the guilty party because of an open window? - but the ruffle of paper underneath his turning foot stopped him in his tracks.

A note.

Max had forced himself to watch enough horror movies and thriller shows to know that a note following a kidnapping could be many things, but it was also the strongest clue a person could have.

What did they think his sister's life was worth? Max wondered as he stared at the note in his palm. Some hefty random? Their most expensive items? A trade of some kind?

Whatever they thought, they were wrong.

The life of his sister was worth so much more. But no matter how much Max knew this, such a thought didn't resist his curiosity to open the note.

** MAX THUNDERMAN.**

**A VILLAIN IS WILLING TO GIVE ANYTHING FOR THE SAKE OF EVIL. ARE YOU?  
**

**IF YOUR SISTER STILL REMAINS IN OUR POSSESION IN A WEEK'S TIME, WE WILL KNOW THAT YOU ARE READY FOR THE PREPPING TO BEING A REAL VILLAIN.**

The note fell from his pale, shaking hands, flapping like a broken wing to the ground.

Vaguely, he remembered that stupid prank war that commenced between Phoebe and himself, remembering how she had acted as the top villain, and he had been willing to do anything in a heartbeat for such a chance.

He never thought being forced to let his sister die would be the cost.

That night, Max crawled under Phoebe's colorful duvet and breathed in the scent of her shampoo on her pillow, wishing to feel the dip of her body beside him, or to feel her hair brushing against his face, like it did when they were kids and she had nightmares left and right.

(Nightmares which he had taken a sick pride in, because she admitted to only sharing the horrors with him and finding him to be a very nice block for such horrible visions at night.)

Soon, he dove into a fitful sleep.

**: :**

The next morning Nora and Billy officially know of Phoebe's presence, and were surprisingly taking it much more calmly than their parents were.

They still glared unsteadily at him as Max stumbled from Phoebe's room, the note burning a hole in the pocket of his wrinkled sweatpants.

(He wasn't sharing it with the others; it would only make a bigger frame on him.)

"We know you didn't do it," Nora said simply as Max distractedly bit at an apple.

Max furrowed his eyebrows. "And how are you so sure on that?" _ And why are Mom and Dad not? _He wanted to add, but he'd never been the best whisperer.

Billy shrugged. "Call it a sibling instinct," was all he would say. Then he and Nora left the room, probably going off to scheme.

Max never really knew what they did in their little duo, but it was usually never good.

His parents murmured back and forth, their glances at him burning holes into his back and head as he finished his apple before hurrying down to his lair. He usually wasn't so ecstatic about going somewhere like school, but it would be the only place for him to properly mull over this in peace.

As he dressed and readied himself, his head ached. Memories with Phoebe burned at his mind like a wildfire, rapidly growing until the flames consumed all his other thoughts - not that he'd been able to think much of anything else in the first place.

There were many things he found annoyingly loveable about his twin. Her determined mindset, her kindness, her humor, the way she always had a way of thanking him, needing him, helping him. How her laugh was infectious, just like her smile.

Max sat on the edge of his bed and sighed.

They were all things he didn't know he'd miss until she was actually gone.

He left for school with his head down - something that his suspicious parents assumed was guilt.

Okay, he may have been filled with a slight tinge a guilt, but it was mostly worry and an obsessive need to come up with a plan.

He only had a week to get his sister back to safety.

If he didn't, and that week ran out, the fate Phoebe could suffer was unimaginable.

**: :**

After a whole eight hours of scribbling and writing in his Math notebook, Max could only come to one conclusion: he was an complete idiot.

For her own safety, Phoebe never went to sleep without her phone in her pajamas's pocket. It had been something he had mocked her for, but he knew that she was secretly paranoid of what could happen in the night after foolishly deciding to join him in watching a thriller show of his.

Sliding down his lair, he bounded to his massive desk of computer and panels.

"Someone load with a spring at school today?" Dr. Colosso asked, looking up from his newspaper.

The evil rabbit went ignored as Max furiously began typing.

It didn't take much to hack into Phoebe's phone and activate the GPS signal - a furiously blinking red dot that looked like a blood speck on a large outline of green land and blue, yellow, and thinner green lines overlapping and falling over each other.

Despite the situation at hand, Max was also kind of excited to find out where his former dream was located at.

"West of Northbridge, eight streets away from Main. . ." His hand moved with lightning speed as bulletined notes to himself. (His horrid direction skills would be no help to Phoebe. "What? It just can't _stop _there."

The tiny red dot remained blinking right in the middle of a street line.

"Ever think of where a lair is located, genius?" Dr. Colosso chipped in once again.

Max looked around at his own lair, then at the blinking dot, then promptly began feeling like a bigger idiot than before. "So it's _under_ Capital Avenue."

"And it clicks," Dr. Colosso muttered before reverting his full attention back to his newspaper. He always had a thing for reading the obituaries first.

**: :**

Max fled from his house at half past midnight, sticking a Post-It to Billy's bathroom door and hoping that he would be able to return with his sister in one piece.

Even as he rode his skateboard down the vacant, moonlit streets that led to the heart of town, Main Street, he felt like a very stupid genius.

What good would it do go against an ultimate villain on his own, with only his powers to back him up with?

Billy's speed, and Nora's heat vision would be as handy as his mother's electric bolts and his father's strength, but he knew dragging his siblings into a battle as blindly as he was leading himself into it would only anger his parents more.

How _more_ mad can a person get when they already think their son was responsible for their daughter's possible soon? Not much, he assumed, taking a sharp turn and disappearing into a suburban neighborhood that would lead him to the edge of Capital Avenue.

Capital Avenue was by far the city's oldest street. Every building on lining the streets still puffed out smoke from its' chimney during working hours, and modern technology seemed nonexistent, which included open and closed signs.

It felt like rolling through a ghost town as Max sped down the street and skidded to a stop in front of a sewer opening.

He looked down and sighed. "Crap."

The stench of the sewer water made his eyes sting, grotesque green and brown water gluing his dark clothes to his body. Max waded through the waist deep water to the side, where a sidewalk of sorts popped out of the wall, surprisingly still covered in forms of litter like candy wrappers and old chip bags.

Pulling at his clothes, he grimaced at himself, choking on the bile rising up his throat.

Not even a superhero had done this before.

Max was in the smack-dab middle of Capital Avenue - right where the blinking red dot had been. But what was he supposed to look for? Chains hanging from the wall? Random blood spots, still fresh and newly splattered? Train his ears for hoarse cries of help, pleading for mercy?

His sister's dead body hanging from the wall?

He shuddered, his nerves running through his spine again and again until he made a turn.

Lucky him. Another note hung taped to the wall, spelling out his name in block letters.

Sighing a curse under his breath, he ripped it from the grimy wall and flipped it open.

**CONTINUE FORWARD AND EVERYTHING IS LOST.**

Well, damn. Everything was lost the minute his sister went missing.

It was senseless to turn back now.

With one anger-fueled hurl, the note was carried away in the current of sewer sludge, and he was trudging on.

After all, the note did say to continue forward.

A battle would have been easier to fight than what greeted him at the next corner.

Unlike what his graphic imagination had led him to fear, Phoebe was not chained or a decaying carcass hanging from the ceiling by a frayed rope.

She was simply a limp figure on the floor in a pile, pale and sickly painted under the lighting of the sewers.

Max's heart exploded with relief and terror; was her chest rising? Did her hair move from air exhaling through her nose?

His heart moved to pound away as a lump in his throat as he ran to her, kneeling down and nervously taking in her still body.

"Pheebs? Can you hear me?" he asked in a whisper. Max let his fingers hover above her; he was afraid of what he would find if he touched her.

A shift. So slight, he thought it was nothing but a flickering of the weakening light fixture above them. But he saw it again, her hair shifting with her scrunched shoulders. It fell away from her eyes, cracked brown eyes red and puffy around the rim peeking out from the greasy brown strands.

Finally Max gave in to the urge to sob, something he had always found so pointless to do, because everyone knew that tears changed nothing except wore you out.

Max finally understood now, mulling over everything as he pulled Phoebe into his lap and cradled her limp body.

No stupid battle would matter to someone who cared.

That was where he failed the most in being a villain.

He was always caring.

**: :**

Floraxide.

He'd never heard of it until some random doctor that had been examining Phoebe came up to their waiting family and explained that much of it had been found in her intestines, a place it effected most when inhaled or digested.

Not enough to kill, but still nothing to look over.

To Max, Floraxide sounded like a knock-off cleaner brand, but he kept quiet, for he was extremely tired and worn. (Note: carrying someone out of a sewer was exhausting work. Never do it again.)

The doctor hadn't explained what it was in depth, but he explained enough for Max to know that just inhaling a small amount of that rubbed into the fibers of a rag was enough to have major effects on a person's body and health.

Max thought about this, taking in Phoebe's appearance now that they weren't in a sewer at an ungodly hour with grime and sewer sludge covering them.

Her cheeks looked too hollow, her hair still too greasy on the appearance of his neat, organized twin sister. In the two days of her absence she seemed to get thinner, or were her collarbones always that protruding?

Their parents stood outside her room, nervously looking. Saving his twin's life had scored him some points back, but not even to completely them of their suspicion, which would probably take time and a lot of convincing from both him and Phoebe before it finally wired down and things returned to normal.

What would normal be after this? His villain goals had been he main focus of his life for the past three years, now it had been wiped away. What would he pursue after this? It wasn't like jumping straight back into superhero mode would be easy to do.

The only answers he could up with depended on Phoebe waking up, which he hoped would be soon.

Although, he thought bitterly to himself, running his hands through his hair, there was the possibility she swam in the same brainwave as their parents and thought he was evil and did it to her on purpose.

Superheroes tended to think alike after all.

**: :**

Phoebe woke up to a sleeping Max at ten in the evening, oddly annoyed at the steady beeping sound coming from somewhere in her room.

Only, it wasn't her room.

It was a hospital room, with a flimsy blue curtains and an ugly border on the wall. An IV poked out of one arm, right into a blue vein that snaked down her forearm.

She frowned at it curiously, because it hadn't been there three days ago.

She hadn't needed her own hospital room three days ago either.

Phoebe looked down at Max again, bent over in a chair, soundly sleeping on the side of her hospital bed.

Phoebe always thought Max had a funny way of sleeping. He drooled, tossed and turned a lot, like he was frequently trying to shake something off him, but other than those, he lacked any other quirks while he slept.

She almost felt bad for kicking him away. Key word being _almost._

"Uh, ow," Max sharply pointed out as soon as he was awake, rubbing the sore spot on his head from his sister's kick.

She shrugged, looking only a little apologetic. She went to same something, but feared she would sound like a dying frog, and opted for staying quiet and making obvious gestures to her throat.

Max seemed to snap to attention at that, and the fact that she was finally awake of twelve hours of being knocked out cold. He furiously pressed the nurse button, only dropping his finger from it when Phoebe's hand clutched his wrist and pried it off.

No sooner than two minutes later did a flustered nurse with flying blond hair come in, looking slightly annoyed as she adjusted her coat and came in to the room. "You rang?" she asked in a polite voiced that became strained as she added, "frequently?"

"My sister's awake," Max said bluntly, and began to leave as the doctor caught sight of Phoebe, awake and touching her throat, looking for something to soften the roughness.

He left the room, phone in hand as he rang his parents, just as the doctor buzzed for backup, leaving his sister in the hands of fussing doctors and soon the worrisome ones of his parents.

He would come back later, when the fuss died down and his sister was able to properly rest.

And when the line between hero and villain and whatever he was wasn't so fuzzy anymore.

**: :**

"You called?" Max said that evening, in fresh clothes skin rubbed so hard it was still slightly pink in some places.

Phoebe nodded, patting the space beside her. Reluctantly he sat, hoping that his worries were for nothing.

"Mom and Dad told me about what what happened," Phoebe began slowly. Her slim fists gathered up sections of blanket and twisted it in her hands. "But I don't really remember. It was just kind of a blur."

His breath caught in his throat, his heart began to pound louder and louder. "What else did they say?"

"They thought you did it," she continued, shrugging without meaning. "I don't think they do anymore."

A pause.

Then he had to ask:

"Do you think I did it?"

Phoebe frowned, the corners of her mouth tugging downward. "No," she said slowly. "I don't know who did actually. Or if it was a person. It just seemed so surreal, dreamlike."

"Maybe that's for the best," Max told her as his chest loosened and finally began breathing again. It was better to know that his sister wouldn't have to live with the memories of being held in a sewer, drugged and lost and hopeless.

Phoebe glanced at him, smiling a tiny smile that made him happy to see, and gave his hand a little squeeze.

"Yeah, you're probably right. It's for the best."

* * *

**Oh, look! Another lame ending from me!**

**I sincerely apologize for this piece of utter crap. Over half of this was written at two in the morning, and I'm always too lazy to go back and edit, so it always seems like a piece of crap whenever I post it.  
**

**But still, a few pity reviews? Please?**


End file.
